Graduate Exit Seminar - Sophia Roberts

Plan to join Sophia Roberts's graduate exit seminar on April 10, 2026, at 9:00 am at Kottman Hall 333 or via Zoom. Sophia will present, "Agency in Environmental Education: An Ecological Understanding of Formal and Informal Educator Collaborations"

Abstract: Environmental education is a vital tool for strengthening environmental literacy, fostering environmental leadership, and creating opportunities for collective environmental action. However, implementing environmental education in formal school settings is often constrained by limited time, administrative approval processes, lack of resources, and uneven levels of institutional support. In such conditions, educator agency becomes critical for successful implementation of environmental education activities. Understanding the contexts in which educator agency emerges and conditions that either limit or invigorate it is therefore a critical tool for developing strategies to increase environmental education in formal settings. This case study, nested within a larger qualitative study of an environmental educator professional learning community, examines a professional collaboration between two formal educators and one informal educator as they navigate contexts informing their agency’s emergence. Notably, existing applications often overlook environmental educators’ interconnectedness across formal and informal spaces and how collaborative relationships inform their capacity to take action. Drawing on ecological agency theory and agentic models, I present a new ecological agency model that explores the role of collaboration among formal and informal environmental educators. Using abductive coding, I analyzed three rounds of semi-structured interviews to inform and refine this model. Findings demonstrate that formal-informal collaboration of environmental educators greatly informs the emergence of ecological agency. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of collaborative ecological agency in environmental education and offers insight into the unique experiences of environmental educators.

Advisor: Dr. Marijke Hecht